Zoobilee

I stared across the child sized,  too short table at Bobby.  He didn't smell like pee.  It was my only break of the day, a whole one hour for both lunch, planning, communicating with parents and whatever other fucked up thing popped up.  Ridiculous.  "Alright, Bobby.  You had a bad day in Spanish.  Now, you are going to have to do the work you should have been doing while you were...well, flipping out".  Yeah, flipping out.  Yelling, screaming, refusing to leave the room, shoving my hands away when I tried to hand you a paper.  Again.  A couple of days ago you threw a chair.  You've attacked most of your classmates, many in my presence.  Randomly.  You've freaked them out.  You've been dragged out of here before.  A lot of the sympathy I had felt for the pee clothes had dried up.  He needed to get his shit together.

"You're taking my recess!" he howled.  Yeah, he didn't buy my creative language at all.  I was totally taking his recess.  If I had had it my way, he would have been sitting on a bench watching the other kids play outside.   And I would be eating lunch in peace, without my least favorite student sitting across from me, taking an extra half an hour of my time.  We decided that we needed to present it to him as not taking recess, but making up for lost time.  And that, coincidentally, comes out of my time, though I had already taught his class once that day.  

"I'll tear it up!" he screamed, referring to the "work" in my hand.  His face was red, he was howling.  I watched the scene play out for a minute.  "You're faking" I finally stated.  He stopped on a dime.  And started laughing.  "Alright, here's your work.  I am going to eat my lunch.  I can sit at my desk, or sit at the table with you.  Which do you want?".  "The table" he answered.  "With you?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes".

I spread out my Bento and started eating, seated in a Kindergartner's size chair.
"I have a fake spacer in my teeth" Bobby said, randomly.
"Open your mouth.  I saw something going on in there while you were screaming".   He opened it.  "That's a crown, what's up with that thing on the other side?"
"I put that in myself".
"What?  Okay Bobby, you do your own dental work?" I responded, gazing in to the silver shit bracing his teeth.
"Yes".

"Do you think tomatoes are gross?" I asked.  "Well, I'm eating the whole thing" I continued, not waiting for answer, while laying it on the crisp bread.  The Wasa kind.  The kind I like.  He actually didn't need help with the assignment.
"You read well" I mentioned.
"You know why?  I go to the Sylvan learning center"
"Really, how often?"
"Once a week.  And then we go to the shi-shi place afterward"
"The shi--shi place, what, some fancy place?"
"Yeah, the sushi place" he responded.

I thought of Emma, my beautiful, fourteen year old niece.  She has liked sushi from the time she was little, and would stuff little calamaris, legs and all, into her mouth on trips to Mexico, in little places with plastic tables while the admiring staff would smile at the cute rubia that would eat anything.   "You have sophisticated taste, Bobby.  Most six year olds won't eat sushi" I finally responded.
"My mom is teaching me to cook".  I was surprised by how articulate he was.
"Do you like that?"
"Yes.  She is teaching me to make sushi rolls".

Your family sounds nice, I thought.  It sounds almost normal.
"Do you have friends in your class?" I asked him.
"No"
"Bobby, you have hit a lot of them".  He nodded in agreement.    "And when you scream and mess up our whole class, it scares them.  They are sick of it." I responded.

He had finished his work.  I pulled out the reflection sheet,  the thing he had crumpled and destroyed both times before.  He grimaced.  "No, this isn't for you, I'm drawing what happened".  I drew stick figures, one for him, one for me.  Him screaming.   Me, looking like Judy Jetson.  I showed him step one.  "Take a reminder, Bobby," I advised, "it doesn't have to go to this" I continued, pointing to the drawing of him screaming, kicking, raging.  Attacking random kids.  Peeing on himself.   "What happens when it goes to step two at home?".   People say they beat the shit out of you.  Say it.  Say it.  "They don't let me go to sushi.  Or I don't get to cook with my mom".  Really?  Why has Family Services been called out a few times?  Why are you so fucked up?

"You kept asking to go to the bathroom.  You said it over and over.  You poked me, which I don't like.  I don't think you had to go to the bathroom.  I think you knew you were in trouble, and you wanted to get out of here".  He drew steam flowing out of my Judy Jetson's head.  "Yeah, it made me mad.  Is that why you did it, to see me get mad?".  "No," he answered "I didn't have to go to the bathroom.  It was what you said.  I wanted to get out of here". 

I took him back to his classroom.  My next class was lining up outside.  "Can you wait with them?" I asked their teacher, as I galloped down the stairs with Bobby.  He grabbed my hand.  I was surprised.  I held it.  I felt him pulling away when we reached the bottom of the stairwell.  "No," I told him, "I feel you trying to let go.  You're not getting away from me.  You are going to hold my hand and like it".  He did.

He will be the same demon he has been for a year and a half.  He is tricky.  He lies and he fakes.  I can't trust him.  But I want to.

He waved at me after school.  That was a first.

Will it change?  I doubt it.